


Problem Number One

by scyther



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Armchair Therapy, Bad Flirting, Bad Jokes, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Humor, Keith (Voltron) Has Anxiety, M/M, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Swearing, bad everything, i literally don't remember anything i wrote so ill add if i ever read it again (i wont probably), i wanted to try my hand at keith pov and it werent so great but it were fun, ok goodbye, or maybe it is idk, this is a therapy fic and it's supposed to be a pick me up for me and you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 18:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14899805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scyther/pseuds/scyther
Summary: Somehow, whether it's the fault of a vast and endless universe with a kink for the ironic, or his meddling former teammates, Keith ends up face-to-face with Lance.  He's been away with the Blade for years, so it's bound to get awkward.Oh yeah, and Lance still loves to hear himself talk.





	Problem Number One

**Author's Note:**

> bruh lol. this doesn't play into canon. keith left because he was sad and now he's back, answering a call from shiro. i don't remember anything from the past couple seasons, don't @ me.  
> i just wanted this thing out of my life before s6  
> things that got cut:  
> -scenes with shiro and allura  
> -contexty stuff that i couldn't fit in  
> -sassy boar-toothed bartender  
> -sex scene (could make it back in if there's any interest)
> 
> i'm writing some other stuff too, so if anyone wants to beta... actually, better, if someone would be willing to nag me once in a while? i'm completely serious. please. i'm on my knees. i'm beggin... but hmu

Keith has a problem. Well, okay, so there’s more than just one problem—there’s several and counting.  Suffice to say he is currently juggling a motley medley of problems.

The thing about Keith and problems is that he's always been pretty good at resolving them.  Or rather, there was a time in his life when they seemed to disappear with hardly any effort at all.  A time when he could handle himself, and the things he loved, and all the bad stuff amounted to bumps in the road that couldn’t slow the inertia of a young hero in his prime.

But you know how it goes when you start out on easy mode; at some point the Life setting gets bumped to expert, and the skills you learned on easy fall depressingly short of what it takes to survive from there on out.

….Anyway, we’ll try not to get distracted by all the psychoanalytical mumbo-jumbo.   ~~We don’t wanna scare him off within the first couple paragraphs.~~  This is basically just a roundabout way of saying that Keith?  Well, he’s dealing with some bumps that have long since made the transition to full-fledged roadblocks. 

So let’s get right down to the nit and the grit: Keith's many, many problems, not the least of which is with himself for coming here.  

Because over the course of the day, Keith has had to come face to face with quite a few things that he's been intentionally avoiding for a very long time.  And even if he weren't mad at himself for awkwardly tailing Shiro all day like a nervous puppy, or for coming across as touchy and taciturn, or even for fucking up what would probably be his last goodbye to Red...

No, Keith's biggest problem at the moment is that he's here, all alone.  In a bar.  With Lance.

And in the name of full disclosure, there are a few things decidedly _not_  wrong with the situation that are rapidly becoming problematic as well.

First of all is that Lance— _Lance,_ Lance, of practical jokes and unrepentant flirtation and speaking his own rivalries into existence—has undergone a bit of a transformation in the years since Keith has last seen him. 

Sure, he’s taller, and a bit sharper in the cheeks, and sometimes after he grins the skin beside his eyes doesn’t immediately spring back.  But what floors Keith the most is one specific way Lance hasn’t changed.  See, perhaps more so than any of the other paladins, Keith has always felt an unspoken sort of camaraderie with Lance.  It may not have been apparent to the outside world, but at some point Keith had recognized something in Lance that was achingly familiar.

Maybe it was the fact that they two had always seemed to get shuffled around in some twisted game of Musical Lions.  Maybe it was something… else.  But here in the present, where he can miraculously interact with Lance and breathe at the same time, it becomes apparent to Keith that the thread of fate between them has withstood the test of time.

Even if he’s wound tight and anxious, there’s a sense of relief being near to Lance.  It’s unexpected.

The boy—man, he supposes—in question makes to speak from beside him, though his voice can't contend with the subdued din of conversation and tinkling glass, and Keith misses the words.  With the lights dimmed to a barely-visible glow, he has to squint to read Lance's expression.  

“I said I’m sorry!” Lance says, loud enough that his voice rises in octave.  He’s sorry?  What could he possibly have to be sorry for?  

Lance’s face is carefully sincere.  “It’s just that I had a feeling something like this would happen.”

"With Shiro?" Keith ventures, referring to the way the former black paladin had booked it from the room several dobashes prior, without so much as a ‘Later, dudes.’ 

…Okay, so it wasn’t like that, exactly.  Shiro was called to a mission, explained the entire situation thoroughly, yada, yada; it didn’t change the fact that the timing was just abittoo spot on.  Seriously, his seat was probably still warm.

Like a curtain being drawn, Lance morphs into something resembling amused.  And it would seem his delight is as contagious as always, because Keith struggles to hold back his own smile.  The idea that after all these years, Shiro would concoct a scheme—even one as transparent as this—to meddle in his team’s affairs…  Well, if nothing else, it’s pretty funny.

“So you  _don’t_  think he got a distress call that conveniently forced him to leave me with you?” Keith asks.  As far as sarcastic quips go it’s a little wordy, but it’s notable progress nonetheless. 

Lance, bless him, has no problem finding the humor, cackling so forcefully that he throws his head back.  "Y'know, I used to think he was so smooth.”  He stares over the bar like he can see Shiro standing between the bustling bartenders, nonchalantly pretending he hadn’t just pulled off his first successful intervention in years.   “We never would’ve made it without him around, huh?” 

_Well that’s a given._   

Over the years Keith has found time to regret a lot of things the crazy universe has thrown at them—like being chosen by Voltron in the first place—but he's never forgotten for a second how much he owes Shiro.   How much Shiro has sacrificed.  How much he's done.  They both take a second to muse in the weight of that.

“It just stinks,” Lance points out, “that he’s gotta run out.  Especially while Pidge and Hunk are already off on their own mission."

Keith nods, even if he doesn't completely agree—it’s easier to get away with being a piece of shit when you have fewer witnesses.  “I hear Shiro's not in charge anymore,” he says, for lack of anything better to talk about.  The words feel strange on his lips; Voltron  _not_ under the guidance of Shiro feels wrong.  Even if, for a while, they’d managed to muddle through without him.  

Lance shakes his head and shrugs.  “Nope.  Couldn’t talk him into it.  Allura, either.”  Keith examines Lance’s face in the aftermath of these words, trying to gauge his opinion on the matter.  When he doesn’t come up with much, he looks away.

“Weird,” Keith hears himself say, because it _is_ weird.  “I just never thought I’d see the day, I guess.  I can’t picture someone trying to give Allura orders.  Or someone who’s taken orders from Allura taking them from anybody else.”

“Trust me, nobody  _gives_ orders to Allura,” Lance concedes, voice oddly strained.  He coughs into the crook of his elbow.  “Yeah, it’s weird, but it’s a you-get-used-to-it weird.  And I think they like their retirement, if you can even call it that.”

They slip into silence.  Weird silence.  Awkward silence. 

Keith chances another glance at Lance, who’s looking at his hands like they might have something to add to the conversation.  With each tick that passes, Keith feels more guilty for driving them into awkward territory.  And he’s about to say something—anything—to break the now-painful quiet, but then Lance looks up with his eyebrows knit in thought.

“Y’know,” he says, slowly, like the words are shy and need to be convinced to greet the outside world, “I’m all for Shiro doing what he needs to do, obviously.  But I think, when you’re a leader, like, at your core like he is, there are certain parts that you just can't… shut off.”

Keith nods.  Lance’s eyes flicker over, and then he continues.

“Lately he’s been way gung-ho about the team dynamic.  Basically thinks building rapport is key.  He’s all on us to work out the stuff we have ‘buried.'”

The word ‘buried,’ right along with Lance’s cynical tone and accompanying air quotes, gives Keith pause.  No, actually, it’s more than that; he might be having what registers as a panic attack.  Because the idea of sharing his insecurities, out loud where it’s real, not just with Shiro but with all of the people he respects?  Yeah, not really his thing.

Lance laughs and nods in Keith’s direction.  “Ha, that’s pretty much the exact face I made.  But, well, you know.  He wants to help."

"And does it?  Help, I mean?" Keith asks.

"Uh, yeah, actually," Lance says.  "I've learned a lot, at least.  I think in the end a lot of it comes back to, uh… when we split.”  He gestures between the two of them, hinting that Keith himself had played a topical role in these discussions.  “How things might’ve been different if he hadn’t been MIA for so long.”

“Shiro talks about me?”  Keith asks incredulously.  In _therapy?_

Lance clears his throat into his curled fist, cheeks darkening.  “Uh, yeah,Shiro.  He’s the one who does the talking, alright,” he says, bobbing his head.  Keith tries to shake the feeling that he’s missing something.

“So..,” Keith starts.  He’s curious to know more, but as usual he’s too chickenshit to pull the trigger already.

“So…?” Lance repeats back at him.  When he realizes he’d never finished his thought, he jerks upright.  “Oh, right, so, as I was saying…  _Shiro_ seems to think that the gang getting back together is the first step.” 

And there it is; the segue of all segues; broaching dangerously close to the topic of Problem Number One.  What follows is a canyon of silence that stretches a kilometer wide and five years deep; a monolith that Keith is directed to scale without any preparation.  Which means he’s now scrambling, trying to piece together something of a safety net from words that have never come together before.

So not officially but not unofficially, the team is reforming.  To hear it out loud is a number of things.  Unsurprising, for the most part, but terrifying.  Exciting.  Paralyzing.

Yeah, that’s a word for it, if there ever was one—paralyzing.  

Lance, presumably witnessing the horror on Keith’s face, realizes his mistake pretty quickly.  He waves his hands between them, shooing away his own words, and the burden they cast on Keith’s shoulders.  “Oh man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—“

“No, stop.  Don’t apologize.” Keith doesn’t want any apologies.  He’s still in no way ready to talk about why a Voltron reboot is a non-starter, but he’s pretty sure that hadn’t been Lance’s intention in the first place.

Besides, it’s within Lance’s right to be curious, to question.  The issue isn’t his nosiness or anyone else’s—it’s Keith's lingering hangups that don’t do anything except… hang.  “It’s fine,” Keith insists.

Lance doesn’t look appeased by the half-hearted reassurance, so Keith summons a bit more.

“I’m the one saying sorry,” he says with an air of finality.  And he is sorry.  

Keithis the one who pulled away, leaving all those strings to unravel.  He’s the one who can’t stand to look back at his failures—even the ones from so far back they’re hardly memories anymore.  He’s the one who’s going to keep pulling away because, even if it’s painful, it’s safer than any other option.  

He’s sorry for all of it.

Lance twists his mouth up on one side of his face, until he looks vaguely like the control panel of Keith’s old piloting simulator—lopsided and endearing.  “Look, how ‘bout this,” Lance says, "I try to keep my foot out of my mouth, and you try to stop feeling guilty for something you don’t have to feel guilty for.”

“Deal,” Keith agrees.  They playfully shake hands like a couple of old, awkward friends… which he supposes they are.

“But let’s say I did come back.  What would I even be doing?” Keith asks, from a place of genuine curiosity.  Whatever this operation is, it’s big, and way out of his depth; he’d hate to be the poor sap in charge. “This is way bigger than Voltron ever was, and I’m just some random guy who can fly real fast.  Wouldn’t I need to be cleared by, y’know... whoever?”  

Shiro had been decidedly mum about a number of subjects, but for some reason _this_ is the one that bothers Keith the most.  See, Keith needs to know who’s calling the shots—who's trying to fill the shoes of the two greatest people he has ever known. 

The question definitely hits  _a_ target, if not  _the_ target.  Namely, Keith seems to have gravitated right to the one question that makes Lance sweat a little.  “Well, see,” he mutters, "uh, you’re not wrong.  But you don’t gotta worry about anything.”  

Keith tilts his head, watching Lance shift uncomfortably in his seat.  “So you’ve already gotten clearance?”

“Yup!” Lance declares, just a little too loudly.  "Clearance gotten.  All cleared."

So maybe it makes him sweat a lot.  Lance is still smiling, but his eyebrows are knit together, like he’s silently begging Keith to just play along.  Keith bites back a laugh: Lance being flustered is striking some annoyingly familiar chords in his mind. 

Okay, he finds Lance’s floundering cute.  That’s not the point.  The point is that he still doesn’t know who’s in charge here. 

And not only that, but something pings a warning in the back of Keith’s brain.  It’s just an errant thought at this point, just the blurry shape of an idea, but…

“So who is it, that cleared me?” he asks.

“Well..,” Lance says, blinking straight ahead, presumably so he doesn’t have to meet Keith's eyes, “…the chief.  And he’s made it perfectly clear that he wants you.”  He pauses.  “...Around.”

And, yup, that pretty much tears it.  Maybe it’s the subtext—okay, so it’s absolutely the subtext— but—

“Shit,” Keith says, realization washing over him.  “It’s you."

Lance heats up like a Texas day in July.  “Hear that?” he asks, cupping his hand to his ear.  “I think it’s the sound of me not knowing what you’re talking about.”

He does, in fact, know what Keith’s talking about; that much is clear all the way from his body language right down to his affected falsetto.  Keith scoffs, not because Lance is deflecting, but because it’s a  _weak-ass_ deflection, and what moron does he expect to fall for that?   

But then he catches a hint of the smile Lance fails to tuck away, and it’s just enough to dislodge something long forgotten and clogged inside him.  And when that age old competitive drive motors up his rib cage like an electric shock, he’s a lost cause.    

That, my friends, is why what makes its way out of Keith’s mouth next so deliciously evil.

“Oh but you do, Lance; we're talking about the chief.  Maybe you've heard of him…  cute, kinda tall.  Doesn’t know when to give up a joke.”  A pause, and then, "Apparently he  _wants_ me.” 

Lance would’ve looked less stunned if Keith had hit him with the blunt end of his bayard.  

“You… think I’m cute?”  Lance asks, with a [redacted] look on his face.  (Redaction per Keith, who thinks it’s unnecessary and obscene for the following to exist in writing:  a comparison of Lance’s expression to a heart-eyed cartoon wolf shouting  _awooogah_ )   **(Author's note:  i know......... don't @ me)**

“That’s really all you got out of that?” Keith snaps back like he’s annoyed, but also he’s redder than a vine-ripe tomato.  

Lance leans toward him, sly grin slashed across his lips.  “You know it is.”  For a moment his eyes drop, like he’s taking Keith in from head to toe, and if Keith thought he was red before…

It’s all he can do not to drive his knee through the steel die wall at this point.

 _Change the subject change the subject change the subject,_ chants Keith’s brain.  He's so full of the thought, that actually conceiving the words to do so proves impossible.   

Mercifully, Lance takes up the challenge.  “Well, congratulations, you’ve unmasked me.”  He gives a fake little bow as if to signal the end of an elaborate performance.  "It was me.  I was the chief all along.”

“Shocker,” says Keith, flatly.  

“And I would’ve gotten away with it, too…”  He trails off.  Keith rolls his eyes.

So Lance is the new Allura?  The new Shiro?  It still hasn’t sunken in, but it’s weird to think about.  

“Chief, huh?” Keith tries out, tasting the word on his tongue; that’s weird, too.  “What’s that like?”

Lance shrugs.  “Oh, you know.  Pretty fuckin’ weird all around,” he says.  Keith laughs, partly because of Lance’s mind-reading prowess, partly his blasé attitude.  

They’re both right, of course—it’s unexpected, awkward in its newness.  It’s strange to try to see Lance in a new light, even though nothing has really changed.  But yet, somehow, and here’s the kicker...

Keith’s not really all that surprised.

“Explain,” Keith says.  To himself or to Lance, he’s not really sure.

Lance juts out his lower lip, squinting, deep in thought.  “Okay.  You remember the one exercise we used to do where we’d plummet to an inch above the ground, all while blindfolded?  That’s kinda what it’s like.”

Keith snorts.  Leave it to Lance to conjure an image so vivid while saying nothing at all.

“Seriously, though?  It’s not so bad,” Lance says.  He hums to himself, the corners of his lips pulling down.  “You learn fast because you gotta.  Make a few bad calls, lose an appendage or two… You know how it goes."

Keith reels back in shock.  Well that certainly took a turn for the uncalled for. “Dude.  Not funny,” he says.  

Lance’s cynical smile slips away.  

“You’re right.  My bad, man,” he responds, breaking his gaze up and away.  Keith curses himself for being too harsh.

“It’s fine,” Keith says, for lack of anything particularly clever to say.  Lance doesn’t respond—doesn’t even give any indication that he’s heard—so Keith takes the opportunity to study him with greedy eyes.

It’s not hard to see his old friend Lance in the person seated beside him, especially not as he churns out joke after joke and flirts without a hint of shame.

What  _is_ hard to wrap his head around, is Lance taking charge—Lance poring over mission specs, debating tactical details as they come to his attention; Lance being the first to shake hands with diplomatic leaders the universe over; Lance, issuing commands to the multicolored and multi-legged soldiers crowded around the bar. 

An image flashes before Keith’s eyes, of a sharp eyed Lance barking orders in the midst of heated combat, clad head-to-toe in military gear that hugs him in some pretty spectacular places...

Keith shoves the idea away.  What the fuck is wrong with him?

“There’s still something I don’t get,” Lance says, a blessed interruption to the horror show of Keith’s own thoughts.  “Shiro really didn’t tell you that I’m the chief?”

Keith shakes his head.  “He didn’t.  He didn’t really tell me anything else, either.”

“Nothing?” Lance asks, the very picture of confusion.  It’s comforting, at least, to know that he hasn’t been colluding with Shiro for the entirety of this ‘keep Keith in the dark’ debacle.

 “Well, you weren’t exactly jumping to tell me, either,”  Keith points out. 

Lance scrunches up his face, which Keith takes to mean he disapproves.  “I thought you already knew and were just screwing with me!  And don’t lump me in with Shiro.  I never know what that guy's scheming.”

Keith analyzes Lance’s face for the moment it takes to decide to believe him.  “Okay, well then, no.  He didn’t tell me you were the chief,” Keith says.  “Or even that there was something to be chief  _of_ , or what’s going on with the team.” 

For a moment, Lance doesn’t look like he has a response except to look completely flummoxed.  If Keith didn’t know any better, he might’ve been convinced that Lance is more upset than he is.

“But why?” he finally asks Keith.  “If no one would tell you anything, why did you bother to show up?"

_That’s the question, isn’t it?_

For the life of him, Keith can’t seem to figure it out—why it annoys him so much, the eggshells and all the people he knows tiptoeing atop them.  It shouldn’t matter to him what goes on on this side of the universe; not when he hasn’t belonged here for so long.  

And yet it lingers, the nagging thought that it  _does_ matter what his friends are doing, and how they’re moving on from the life they once had together.   

So, if the question is why he came...

The answer is stupid.  Stupid and complicated, and Keith is a coward who would rather die than commit the truth to words. 

Keith takes a shaky breath in.  Lance will just have to settle for truth-adjacent instead.

“Shiro called.  That’s all it took.  I knew right away that it had to be Voltron,” he says.  "Maybe that’s why he didn’t say anything—because he didn’t have to.  The moment Shiro popped up on my com screen, I knew Voltron was back, and I knew he was going to ask me to join."

Keith can feel Lance’s eyes on his face like a weight on his heart.  “And that's why you came?” he asks.

“Kinda.  I felt like I owed him that, at least.  The decency of hearing him out."

“But then he didn’t ask you,” Lance says.  Keith nods.  “…Did you want him to?” he hedges with a tilt of his head.

“I… I don’t know.  I guess not.  I knew what my answer was.”  Correction: he thought he knew what his answer was.  “It’d be pretty dumb to hope he’d ask, just for me to say no, y’know?” 

“Hmmmm,” Lance says, almost like he doesn’t know.  Silence falls between them.

Finally, Lance inhales, lifting his shoulders as he prepares to speak.  “I don’t think it's dumb, to want to be… I dunno the right word.  Needed?”

“No, what's dumb,” Keith says, “is to want to be needed in one specific way.  Like in a way that makes all the doubt in the world disappear.  To hold out for that—now _that’s_  dumb.”  His knee stops bouncing just long enough for him to to give the bar a satisfyingly sharp kick. 

“Oh,” Lance says.  It’s not an  _‘I wasn’t expecting you to say that’_ oh; it’s a  _‘holy shit I just realized something’_ oh.   And then, like he’s just _really_ trying to jack up Keith’s blood pressure, he says it again:   

“ _Oh._ "

“What?”  Keith asks warily.

“Nothing,” Lance chirps, which is possibly the least reassuring response he could’ve provided.  And even worse—it’s _all_ he says; Lance leaves it there, apparently content to let it stew and bubble and boil over in Keith’s already addled mind. 

“Seriously, what?” Keith asks again, to which Lance responds with a shake of his head.  He’s smiling, the smug bastard, and it infuriates Keith all the more.  

There’s a part of Keith that can tell what’s coming—that can feel the irritation swell up like a force.  A part of him that regrets the words before they’re entirely formed, that does its best to shove them back down.  Sometimes Keith wishes that part was just a little bit stronger.

“Man, I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” he snaps, “but whatever it is, it’s irritating.  Look, this barely has anything to do with you, and even then it’s not something you can fix with a few comforting words and a pat on the back.”

With the angry heat Keith can feel himself emitting, he half expects Lance to be subdued.  But Lance doesn’t give an inch, instead greeting Keith with a sort of level calm that diffuses his indignation on the spot.  

“Yeah, Keith, I know,” he says, and it sounds like he does.

Keith reels back, more so mentally than physically, as he tries to pinpoint where the trajectory of the conversation had gone array.  Lance _knows?_ Somehow Keith doubts it.  God, Keith hopes he’s right to doubt it. 

“It’s just... complicated,” Keith blurts, only this time it’s not powered by anger or annoyance; it’s powered by a powerful need to explain his explosive feelings on the subject.  Lance’s expression, which is suddenly the single most riveting thing in Keith’s universe, shifts just ever so subtly.

“What’s complicated?” Lance asks, genuinely curious and curiously genuine.  “The Blade?”

“No.”   _Wait, yes.  Yes is the easy excuse answer, dumbass._   He wonders, briefly, if hypnotism is real, and if that’s how Lance is getting him to say these things.  “I mean, yeah.  And no.”

Lance looks away, clearly trying to hide a smile.  And while it’s annoying that he’s smiling at Keith’s expense, it’s not halfway as annoying as the giddiness that comes along with causing the smile in the first place.

“ _Quiznak_ , if you don’t knock that off I’m gonna lose it,” Keith says.  He’s not sure if he’s referring to Lance’s armchair psychologist act or to the offending smile, which is quickly becoming a four-letter word.

“I didn’t even say anything,” Lance retorts.  He makes a couple of motions with his hand, drawing a tall blue bartender to their end of the bar.

“I’m not gonna try to convince you of anything, but you can’t stop me from showing you a good time.”  Lance winks, his grin wide and unbearably bright, and there’s no arguing.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take long after that.  

See, Keith’s never been too good at easy or comfortable.  Even back before things started getting difficult, back before he’d realized that he couldn’t just keep coasting anymore, he’d had trouble feeling at home in his own skin.

It’s something he’s always envied about Lance; that the blue paladin seemed solid in this world, and real, unwavering in his convictions.  It’s why Keith’s spent an embarrassing amount of time just watching him, waiting for his opinion, seeing the way he draws people in, like something magnetic.  

And maybe it’s why soon, in this bar, in the center of this strange military compound, overlain by the rusty hue of this planet's warm sunset, Keith will sit across from Lance and feel something inside him finally unclench.

But we’re not quite there yet.

“So wait, stop.   _What_?!” Keith exclaims, waving his hands to signal to Lance to ix-nay on the ory-telling-stay.  His chest hurts from laughing, but he wants to hear what comes next. 

“Yeah, that’s right, you heard me.”  Lance validates Keith’s incredulity with a dose of his own.  “Hunk— _that_ Hunk—whips Yellow around like it’s nothing, then says, ‘Lights out for you,’ the smooth bastard, and sends the launcher flying out of orbit.”

They share laughter between them like a flask, fueling one another on.

“ _Hunk_ ,” Keith repeats, more for emphasis than confirmation.  

Amid his laughter Lance slaps his thigh.  “Right?” he says, and his face evolves into something wistful and fond.

“It sounds like a lot has changed.”  Keith is glad to hear that his old friends have continued as they were, even if it brings up something sour in his chest at the same time.

Lance thinks that over for a moment, eyes lifting to glance at Keith and then dropping away again.  “You might be surprised,” is what he settles on, and though the pensive tone of Lance’s voice is clearly meant to conceal something, Keith isn’t sure how exactly to clarify what that might be.  Or if he even wants to.

The conversation stills then, as both become lost to their own thoughts.  Keith stares down into the goblet on the bar before him, into the viscous liquid inside it.  It’s not alcohol—at least, not alcohol as Keith knows it—it’s subtly sweet and easy to swallow, and its greatest effect so far has been to warm him, and soften the edges of the world a bit.

‘It doesn’t impair judgment like alcohol,’ Lance had explained, ‘Or so Pidge and Hunk've said.  I don’t understand the technical bunk.’

Keith wonders, if he had access to real alcohol, if he would’ve accepted any.  Would he drink just enough to lower his inhibitions, and tell Lance the real reason he agreed to come?  Would he spill the beans, reveal that he’d come to kill the dream of Voltron, once and for all?  

What would he say?  ‘Hey Lance, I’m really only here for one last goodbye?’  That’d go over well.

Would he admit to himself, in the stillness of the moment, that cutting ties doesn’t sound like such a comfort anymore?

He’s learned a lot, in one afternoon, from the things Lance says and doesn’t say.  Things about Pidge and Hunk, about their work here, about the crazy shit Allura and Coranhavegotten into.  He’s even managed to squeeze in some lighthearted teasing about Lance’s love life, material courtesy of their sassy bartender.  (Lance blushing and insisting, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m as suave as ever” is gonna stick with Keith for a long time.)

Keith could’ve never guessed it would come to this point, to him seated next to Lance and _thinking_ , actually considering putting words to the amorphous self-doubt that had convinced him to cut and run so many years ago.  And maybe it’s just thoughts rattling around inside Keith’s head, thoughts that will never see the light of day, but it’s a testament to Lance's strengths as a person—as a leader—that the thought of the guy knowing everything from start to finish doesn’t make him recoil in horror.

But Lance doesn’t need Keith’s approval to prove his worth; the proof of that is all around them.

“So… it’s going to be a school?” Keith asks, feeling the words in his mouth carefully, like they’re the issue, and not the meaning attached to them.

“But not.”  Lance reminds him.

“And a base of operations,” Keith continues, fully expecting that Lance will follow through—

“But not!”  There it is.

Keith hums, raising an eyebrow.  “Hmm, yes, it’s all so clear now.”

Lance only shrugs, unaffected by the criticism.  “It doesn’t really matterwhat we _call_ it _.”_

 _“_ Comforting words from the leader of the operation,” Keith returns with ease.

“Hey!” Lance says, grin pressing his cheeks up so firmly that his eyes smile right along with his mouth.  “But you’ve made my point exactly! If the leader says you don’t have to worry about the unimportant details, you don’t worry about the unimportant details!”

“Is that how your leadership works?”  Keith makes sure to squeeze so much derision onto his words that there’s almost no room for a question mark.  He realizes he’s begun to lean into space that is not his own, to square himself off into Lance Land.  He pulls back; that’s a line so deep—so uncrossable—it’s dangerous.  “Just sounds like lazy writing to me."

Lance, caught up in the banter, confirms with a nod and a “You're not wrong.”  

“But you came at a good time.  Everything's brand new,” Lance says.  “Mum’too—that’s what this planet is called—wasn’t being used for anything, so it makes for a good base while we’re still testing things out.  The eventual goal is actually a traveling sorta situation.”

Keith nods.  “I suspected.  When Shiro was showing me around I noticed that nothing seemed… tied down, so to speak.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Except, well…”

“The castle-ship,” Lance concludes proudly.  “Keith, my man, as we speak we’re smack dab in the middle of an Allura Original Creation.  Pulling this whole place together in a feat of Altean innovation is as close to retirement as the princess can get, it turns out.”

“No surprises there,” Keith says.  Lance beams.

“What else is newsworthy...?” Lance asks himself, tapping his fingers to the lip of his glass.  They could go on like this forever, but there’s something Keith has to know.

He takes a deep breath.  “How about this.” 

Lance looks over, expression expectant.

“You can tell me who'll pilot Red after I leave,” he says, holding Lance hostage with his gaze.  The former blue paladin winces, sucking in air through his teeth.

“Oh.  Man.  Is that really what you wanna talk about?  Like, right now, right now?”  Lance looks deeply uncomfortable at the idea. 

“Yeah, it is,”  Keith says. “Is it still you?"

Lance scratches at the back of his head, lips still drawn around his teeth.  “Look, I was kinda... hoping to build up to that.”

“So it is you,” Keith concludes.  Good.  He doesn’t know if he could trust anyone new to handle Red.

“No, that’s not what I said!”  Lance’s hand movements begin to near frantic proportions.

Keith scowls.  “So who?” he demands.  “Shiro?  Allura?”   _Someone else?_

“Is it just me, or did this all come out of nowhere?” Lance asks, still trying to instill some humor among the tension.

“Quiznak, you’re just like Shiro,” Keith says, throwing his hands up in the air.  He hates tossing words around like knives, but this is just criminal.  “Why are you still trying to keep me in the dark?”

“Because it doesn’t matter!”  Lance shouts, and only then does Keith realize how loud they’ve gotten.  Naturally, he forgets their volume the moment Lance gets up in his face.

“It does!”  Keith yells, doing some squaring up himself.

“It doesn’t!”

_“It does!”_

_“It doesn’t!"_

The back-and-forth goes on for a hot tick and ends with a sudden, shockingly cold dose of deja-vu.  In practically the same moment, Keith and Lance seem to realize they’ve reverted to their early-Voltron days, and both stare blankly into a mirror of recognition.

Of course, another couple of ticks and the pair have dissolved into uncontrollable laughter.

“Quiznak,” Keith mutters to himself a short while later, righting the stool he’d apparently knocked over in the commotion.  Beside him, Lance is wiping away tears of laughter and trying to shield his face from the audience they’ve attracted (which is pretty much the whole bar, at this point).  “Everyone’s staring.”

“They came for the drinks and stayed for the show,” Lance says.  The hand along his brow can’t hide the ill-supressed grin on his lips.

Keith shoves him so hard he almost falls off his seat.  “You’re just as insufferable as I remember.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Lance responds once Keith has resettled, “but you're right.  It shouldn’t be up to me to withhold that kinda stuff from you.”

Keith listens with baited breath.

“So here’s how it’s gonna go,” Lance continues, “I’ll tell you everything you wanna know, if you just agree to hear me out.”

He pauses to allow Keith time to think it over.  Keith doesn’t need time—he nods.

And though Lance had just made a plea for the stage, now that he’s gotten it, he looks a little unsure.  “Uh, see, there’s two reasons.  Two reasons why Lancey-Pants is a little reluctant to spill the Voltron beans.”  

Lance coughs, lightly, into his hand.  “First is that I don’t really think it’s fair?  To you, I mean.”

“To me,” Keith repeats.  He tries not to let his mind fill in the blanks like some kind of self-loathing Mad Lib.  He's only mildly successful.

“Yeah, you,” Lance says.  “Look, Keith my man, you’re a living human being.  And as one of those living human—uh,  _sentient_ beings—who also happens to be one of my oldest friends: You deserve to be happy.” 

See, this?  This moment right here?  This is the moment that Keith realizes he regrets… everything.  He’s not prepared to hear this shit right now.

“The point is I don’t want you to feel like you have to come back just for our sake.  Red, and the rest of the team and I, we wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves.  Does that make sense?”

The words, maybe.  It’s the way they’re strung together that has Keith a bit mixed up.  “For your sake?” he asks.

“Well, yeah,” Lance says like it’s completely obvious.  “I mean, of course we feel bad for messing things up with you, and—“

“Sorry, but ‘messing things up?'” Keith interrupts.

“Yeah…,” Lance says, his eyebrows knit together.  “I would say basically driving you away falls under the ‘messing up’ category…”

“Quiznak,” Keith says, “ _driving_  me _away?”_

Lance begins to scan the bar around them, his face the picture of puzzlement.  “What’s going on here?  Why are you repeating everything I say?  Am I being punk’d?  Is this Space Punk’d?”

But Keith is well past the point of joking.  He puts his head in his hands and releases a long, drawn-out groan.  “Lance, I think you’re a little confused.”

“Wow, understatement,” Lance quips.  “I figured either wires got crossed or you got stuck in a time loop.  Because that’s a thing that happens here, on this side of the galaxy.”

“No, Lance, I mean you’re confused about why I left Voltron.  You guys didn’t ‘drive me away.’”

“Uh, yeah we did,” Lance says.

“Funny, because you'd think I'd know why I left, being the one doing the leaving and all,” Keith says with a scoff.  Frankly, this argument is ridiculous.

Lance crosses his arms over the bar counter.  “Why, then?” he asks.  Keith gets the distinct feeling that he’s being backed into a corner on this one.  His knee bounces out a rhythm.

“Couldn’t say.”   _Even if I wanted to.  “_ But I can say that it was on me.  Definitely, completely, 100% me.” As far as Keith is concerned, it’s the truth.  Remember, Keith is the one who pulled away, leaving the strings to unravel blah blah blah…?  You remember, right?  We went over this. 

“Okay, but just…,” Lance trails off.  “Let’s say you’re right, and you didn’t leave because of us.  But, man, it doesn’t change the fact that you were miserable and we didn’t do anything about it.  And we let you stay gone for who knows how many years…  So, yeah, maybe we didn’t make you leave.  But we didn’t exactly stop you, either.

“I just don’t wanna be the guy that guilts an old friend into doing something, if that something is gonna make him unhappy.” 

So, just a status update: at this point the conversation has taken so many twists (into annoying) and turns (into touching) that Keith thinks he might have whiplash.  He wrestles with his thoughts, weighs Lance’s point in his mind.  It’s probably not worth it, he decides, to contest number one, even if he hasn’t fully comprehended its relevance to Red.

“Whatever,” he says, “can we move on to reason number two?”

“Fine, fine.  Moving on!” Lance declares, thrusting an arm triumphantly before him.

“Okay, so the second thing,” he says.  “As I so eloquently put it just a dobash ago: it really doesn’t matter.”

“Well that’s just—“

Lance lifts his finger up so quickly that his wrist makes a popping sound.  “Hey, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s supposed to go listen first, shit all over my thoughts second.”

Keith raises his eyebrows, unimpressed, the universal signal for ' _then get the fuck on with it.'_

But Lance can't be pushed to get on with anything before he's ready.  “You decided to ask the hardest question I could possibly try to answer.  So whine all you want, babe; I’m still gonna try to get it right.”

“Uh,” Keith says, face heating up embarrassingly quickly for a comment so offhand.  “How is that a tough question?  It should be simple.”

“Yeah,” Lance replies with a thoughtful shrug, “so should ‘Why won't you consider coming back to Voltron?’  But sometimes when things follow a predetermined route, that’s just the way they’re gonna go.”

Keith scoffs at the cheap shot, his knee churning.  “It’s not the same thing,” he hisses, as loudly as he can without shouting, “And it’s time to stop with the bullshit, okay?  I only wanna know what’s gonna happen to my lion!” 

And just like that, all sense of pretense is wiped away.  It’s funny that the greatest love story of Keith's life is the one between him and Red, when she wasn’t even the last lion he’d piloted.  Or maybe it’s less funny than… the exact opposite of that.

Lance seems to deflate an inch or two.  “Fine.  But you’re not gonna like it-

"The answer is nothing.  No one.”

“What?”  Keith asks.  No one?  No one is the answer?

“Yeah, you heard me.  If you’re not piloting Red, no one’s piloting Red.”  As Lance continues to speak, it feels somehow like he’s talking from a different room, like he’s not really there.  “Remember rule number one, no spiral of guilt.  That's why it’s number one.  Think of it like a disclaimer.”

“Huh,” is all Keith can say, especially with Lance shooting him concerned and cautious glances every moment or so.  Shit.

_If Red doesn’t have a pilot, does that mean—?_

_“_ Yep, you’re getting it,” Lance says, once again displaying his disturbing ability to read Keith’s most intimate thoughts.  “Donezo for Voltronzo."

“Wow.”  Which, maybe also isn't the most eloquent thing to say, but give Keith a break, alright?  This is a lot to take in a short amount of time; let him have a little one-word commentary while every cubed inch of anger dissipates from his body.

“I did tell ya it’s a tough question.”

“Yeah,” Keith says.  “I just didn’t realize you meant for me, and not for you.”  

“Trust me, it’s hard for everyone,” Lance corrects, resting his hand on Keith’s shoulder.  

Keith looks up at him.  “You were right.  That question… just like the one you brought up.  It’s too… complicated to answer without a whole lot of disclaimer."

Just then, Lance makes a face.  It’s quick and not meant to be seen by Keith or anyone else—nothing more than a twitch of muscles, but there’s no denying that it happened.  

“What?” Keith asks warily.  And when Lance tries to wave it off like it’s nothing, he knows he can’t just let it slip by.  “Don’t start with me again, man, or I’ll show everyone here what a _real_ show is." 

“Nothing, I just..,” Lance furrows his eyebrows in thought, “I was thinking that you say that a lot.  'It's complicated.'"  The way Lance mentions it—light, matter of fact, like he’s talking about the weather or his skincare routine—almost offends Keith more than the sentiment itself.  Almost.

"I'm sorry, _what_?" Keith responds, the sharpness of his tongue cutting short the words in his mouth.  He’s trying his damnedest not to get wound up in a whole new way, but Lance is the last person he wants to judge him right now.

Lance cradles his pint with both hands, peering into the contents like they might tell him what to say to avoid a fight with Keith in this bar tonight.  "I'm not judging, man.  Just saying you've said that a lot tonight.  'It's complicated,' 'it's not that simple.'"

Keith can't believe what he's hearing, and Lance's quiet demeanor certainly only adds fuel to the fire.  He balls his hands into fists, clenches his jaw, struggles not say something he'll regret.  "Sometimes things are complicated, Lance," he grits out.  He's not sure exactly what button Lance has pushed, but here it is, pushed.

"I know that," Lance says, "it's just... Is it always, y'know... _that_ complicated?"

And Keith just doesn't know how to respond to that, so he fumes for a moment, tries to get a hold on this feeling bubbling under his skin.

"So what am I supposed to do, Lance?" he finally manages to say, and it feels too much like a confession, too much like Lance has a point, but he pushes on.  "Just get over it?  Stop being so dramatic?"

"No, that's not what I mean."  Lance gives him a Look, and he might as well have just taken his drink and poured it over Keith’s head...  Because this Look isn't one you get from someone about to give you some Very Unnecessary Advice.  It's... pensive?  Understanding?  Whatever it is, it's enough to convince Keith to let Lance say his piece.  

"I'm saying that sometimes," Lance continues, so quiet and un-Lancelike that it summons a cloud of question marks to the forefront of Keith's mind, "it's easier to assume it's too complicated than it is to look at the situation... y'know, how it really is?"

If Hurricane Keith were still spiraling full force, he would've probably said something like, 'what do you know?'  But instead he waits, finds himself wanting to hear what Lance has to say.  

Lance takes a long, deep breath, and then he speaks.

"I used to… uh, get these nightmares, right?  Not too long after you left.  Like these crazy, recurring night terrors, that like, even after I woke up made it feel like my world was coming to an end."

'What happened?' Keith finds himself unable to ask, something bitter and dark rising from his chest to his throat, watching with intensity the way Lance's jaw clicks into place.

"Every time I'd wake up, alarm blaring, and I'd book it to the hangar.  I'd suit up.  And then I'd run to Red, or even Blue sometimes, and…” 

Lance doesn’t finish the thought, but he doesn’t have to.

"And she wouldn't let you in," Keith finishes for him, voice laced in solemn certainty.  Lance's smile doesn't reach his eyes.

Suddenly, their dynamic of mere ticks ago has melted away, leaving something raw and honest in its place.  So Keith wasn't the only one, huh?  He wasn’t the only one who felt like a square peg trying to fit himself into a circle hole?

Keith can’t pinpoint what it means that Lance has managed to see right down to a that deep and painful insecurity, that he _understands,_ truly and completely.  But he knows it means something.

It means something that Keith isn't the only one who has felt a certain sort of way for a certain length of time.  It means something that Lance was also there, floundering alone in that space, alongside Keith in the dark.

And maybe the explanation is as simple as Lance changing and growing, but it means something that now, the first time they’ve come together in years, Keith is privy to a side of Lance he has never seen before.  

"So what happened?" Keith says, because in the pit of his gut something has slotted in place, and he's sure that Lance is careening toward some sort of endgame with this.  He has to be.

“Nuh-uh, no way am I giving all this away for free.”  Lance holds his finger up like he’s a professor about to make a very important point.  “It’s give-and-take, not I give, you take.”

Keith scoffs.  “It’s like you’re going out of your way to be the worst.”

“If you can't handle me at my vague and infuriating, you don't deserve me at my tragic backstory,” Lance retorts with a full, literal eyebrow waggle.

“Fine,” Keith says.  He grips his drink a bit too forcefully and the liquid laps up the sides of the glass.  He tries to think of a topic that won’t make him want to throw himself off the planet, but will placate Lance and keep him talking. 

“We were never rivals,” he blurts.  “You know that, right?  You used to insist we were rivals, and maybe sometimes I rose to the bait and acted like it.  But I never hated you.  And I never thought of us as rivals.”

Lance snorts and shakes his head, like it’s a fond memory he looks back on often.  “Aw man, I’m sorry.  I was such a dumb kid.”  He smiles.  “My thinking back then was so black-and-white.” 

He stops for a moment, only continuing when he notices Keith, rapt at attention.  "I thought, y’know, there was the best, and then there were people who didn’t matter. I idolized you at the same time that I wished you didn’t exist, and that was the only way I knew how to force myself onto your radar.”

Well, color him shocked.  Keith wouldn’t have suspected, ever.  In a million years.

“You wanted on my radar?” he asks, trying to sound nonchalant and failing as miserably as Lance had before.  The blue paladin’s cheeks darken, just pink enough to be visible.  It’s cute.

“That’s all you got out of that?” Lance teases.  The hand on Keith’s shoulder trails down, down, until it settles above his knee.  Keith feels… safe.  Calm.

Unfortunately, that makes it Keith’s turn.  He’s preparing to continue to play it small and safe, but then with a sense of horror something different comes welling forth—and it’s—and he’s—

“I know you want to know why I had to leave.  That’s what everyone always asks,” he says, feeling like he’s seated two seats away, watching himself speak the words.  "But I can’t tell you, because I don’t  _know_.  I don’t think I want to know.” 

Surprisingly, the universe doesn’t come crashing down around him.  He doesn’t die instantly, impaled by his own shame.  And his shame definitely doesn’t fill the room like a deluge of seawater, overtaking and drowning each and every patron of this bar.  Not even a little.  

As if privy to Keith’s innermost thoughts, the lights above them begin to flicker on, one by one.

“Go on,” Lance says.

Keith keeps talking.

“And Shiro kept going on about loneliness and what it does, but I’ve—I’ve basically just been  _angry._   At myself, for years.  Because I can’t be happy no matter what I do.  A-and you can’t tell Shiro I said this, okay, but I got this idea, that the only way I could stop spreading my poison was to cut all ties and…”   

As Keith trails off he stares down at his hands.  They’re shaking, just barely.  God, it sounds so stupid out loud.  

The final light struggles, briefly, and then it’s on too.

“Okay,” Lance says, expression soft and hand even softer where it rests, glowing atop Keith’s thigh.

Keith takes a long swig of his drink.  

“Go on,” he mimics back at Lance.

Lance, mercifully, doesn’t waste any time.  He clears his throat, does what he needs to return to the right headspace.  His thumb pulls ever-so-slowly over the fabric of Keith’s jacket.

“So I would've never said it, but for the longest time it just felt like I was... waiting.  I watched you go, Shiro was long gone, and I started to think that, well... maybe Voltron wasn't the forever thing I had always thought it would be."

_God, if that wasn’t the truth._

"So I was just, y'know, _lying in wait_.  For my own end.  Because with the dreams, with everything, I thought that _something_ would have to come to a head.  Not like, with me dying or whatever, don't get me wrong.  But I thought for sure the time would come, and I would be forced out, asked to leave, if not by the team then by one of the lions, like in the dream.  And then it got weird piloting Red and… might as well let it happen, if that makes sense?"

Finally, Lance extracts his hand and places it on his own lap.  He looks down, face painted blue in the soft ambient light, eyelashes brushing his cheekbones.

“What then?” Keith asks.

“Well, I lost a foot, for one,” Lance responds, smirking when Keith scowls at him.

“I thought we agreed that wasn't funny,” he says, but Lance’s face remains placid.  “Oh.  You’re not joking."

Lance pats the leg closest to Keith.  “Nope, from the knee down.  The prosthetic’s pretty cool.  No cool alien technology, but still.”

Keith, unable to think of anything to say as usual, wonders if he’s supposed to express pity for Lance’s fallen limb.

“And before you start in,” Lance says, brightly, “Just know that it was on my call, before we got the real Shiro back.  And if it hadn’t happened, I probably would’ve never made it here.

“I don’t even know how to describe it really.  It’s not like it magically made me courageous or any bull like that, but I had a new lens to look through after that.  It’s been a battle ever since, just like it always was before."

“And now?” The words slip out of Keith’s mouth like sand through his fingers, the gravity of the moment tracking with static.

“What?” Lance asks with those eyebrows of his coming in hot.

“Uh,” Keith says, having only just processed his own word vomit (and yes it is every bit as humiliatingly awkward as it reads written down), “I just—how is anything different now?   _Is_ it even different now?” 

And somewhere in there—not even particularly deep, and probably well transparent—there’s another question.  A question about himself, and how this all relates to him, selfish as it may sound.

Lance hums.  “Thaaaat’s a toughie,” he says _.  “_ But it’s simple.  And it's selfish.”

Keith’s heart stutters questioningly in his chest. 

“We’re not, like, the legendary defenders of the universe anymore.  We’re old news.  We fought the big fight.  We won.”

He speaks, he grins.  Keith winces.  Sometimes looking at Lance is like staring straight into the sun.

“But I think that’s what all this is about, isn’t it?” Lance continues with a vague hand motion.  “The universe has plenty of reasons to still want Voltron around.  And  _we_ want her even more.” 

He looks at Keith, smile broad with wonder.  “We don’t need you, Keith, not the way you might need to be needed.  We like you, and it has nothing to do with what you can do for us."

Here’s the whole, unfiltered truth: ever since he left the team, Keith has had this feeling, persistent in the back of his mind. The tiniest of glimmers that tugs him endlessly toward the magnet that is Voltron.  Shove it down far enough and you won’t have to acknowledge it for years at a time, but still it moves, pulls you, urges.  Because once you’ve been tainted by Voltron you’re ruined for everything else.

Like a curse, the glimmer holds his wounds open, refusing to let him heal.  No matter how he tries to quash it, drown it, forget it, he continues to be pulled in every direction.

Though he has yet to admit it to himself, the real reason Keith came here today was to kill the glimmer, once and for all.  

It’s starting to look like that won’t be necessary, what with the way his heart  _pump-pump-pumps_ in his chest. 

“You really think it’s… what,  _okay_?” Keith asks, incredulous.  "You think we can just reboot the most powerful force in the universe because we feel like it?”   

“Hey, for better or worse, we’re part of that universe.  We deserve some say.”

Keith locks eyes with Lance.  He can’t remember the last time he’d felt this at peace.  He looks away.  There’s a long, long stretch of silence.

“Do you think…  Do you think Red would let me pilot her?” he asks.  Lance touches their pinky fingers together, just barely.

“Loaded question,” Lance says. 

Keith hums in agreement.  “I bet you have one, too.”

“Sure.  When you left Voltron, was it because of me?”

“No, what the  _fuck,”_ Keith says, lurching forward.  “Did you… think that?” 

Lance shrugs sheepishly.  “For a while.  I never claimed my brain was like, logical."

Keith sits back on his stool and lets his mind drift back.  “No.  I loved you all too much.  Even you.  Sometimes  _especially_ you…  There was a point that I hated you, though.” 

“What?  When!?” Lance yelps.

“Well, I had a huge thing for you for a long time.  Couldn’t stop thinking about you.  It pissed me off.”  Keith can feel the tips of his ears heat, but it’s worth it to see the look plastered on Lance’s face, wavering between shades of red.

But Lance is never one to be outdone.  

“Hey that’s great!  I mean, since you already know what the chief wants.”  Keith groans while Lance howls at his own joke, laughter persisting at least until his diaphragm wears out and he’s face down on the bar, body still overcome by occasional tremors.

“Aw, man,” Lance chokes out, swiping imaginary tears from his cheeks.  He takes a sip from his drink.  Keith takes one from his.

“You could find a replacement for me, you know,” Keith says.  "With the reach Voltron has now, you could find another Red pilot.  You could go on without me.”

“That’s not the point."

"The point."

"Yeah, the point," Lance insists, smile on his face contagious enough that Keith finds himself smiling right along.  "The real one, not the one you seem so fixated on."

"Which is?" Keith prods, smile blooming into a full-blown laugh.  At some point Lance had shifted, his leg drifting mere centimeters from Keith's own, close enough that he can feel the heat between them.

"I pretty much said it already: there's no replacing you, man.  That’s no Voltron at all without you, and I’m okay with that.  We’ll survive.” Lance holds his finger up to wave in his face.  Keith smacks it away.  "Voltron is... a bonus.  The dessert after a six course meal... well, seven with Coran."

"Now I'm definitely lost," Keith says, and he's laughing, more confused than anything but amused as well.  “...I’m glad Shiro invited me.”  He looks down at his hands, notices their proximity; his thigh pressed up against Lance’s from the knee up, tightly with the tension of muscle.

A bolt of desire rocks through him.  He doesn’t pull away.

“Alright, so this isn’t a yes,” he says, which in itself is a step in the wrong direction.  He’s only a little annoyed when Lance perks up anyway, corner of his lips tilting into a smile.  

“Ask the loaded question, Keith,” Lance teases.  Keith wonders what his stupid neck tastes like.  

“Do you think I could fly Red, one last time?”

It’s more than a little infuriating, because there’s no doubt where this is heading.  

Lance gets it, though he tries and fails miserably to hide the glow of his smile.  Because he knows just as well as Keith, that the moment he steps inside that lion— _his_ lion, and no other—he’s hooked.  There’s no turning back. 

Lance says something in return, probably something like, “Yeah, I think we can work that out.”  Whatever it is, Keith doesn’t hear, because he’s too busy being astounded; too busy vibrating between reality and the something he’d just realized:  _there’s a chance._

And that might be why, when their hands brush, when Lance leans even deeper into Keith's space, Keith leans back.

“Ask the loaded question, Lance,” Keith says.

Lance asks.

 

* * *

 

Lance wakes up in the dark.

He’s sweating—gross—and spread-eagle on the community couch, and when he comes to it’s with a horrified gasp and a burst of energy that propels him to a sitting position.

Lance slaps himself on the cheeks, almost to confirm something to himself, and then slides his palms back to his temples, behind his ears, and then down along his neck, until he’s practically fetal.  

All there is to do now is wait, because knowing that the memory of Shiro spitting in his face and calling him a fake was a product of his own mind doesn’t make it any  _quieter_.  So Lance is caught then, forced to sit it out and wait until it fades into the hum of the castle-ship.  It’s ironic, he thinks, that the only barrier between him, open space, and the war of it all, struggles to outperform the telenovela featured nightly in his brain. 

Lance stares at his elbows long after his breathing has slowed, after the ringing in his ears has made its exit.   Hunk, sprawled on the opposite side of the couch, rolls over in his sleep.  His bandages itch like crazy.

Lance realizes he’s never woken from a nightmare to anything but his own room, cold and alone.  And somehow—is it Hunk’s body heat?—he’s thawed enough that his feet will move.

He nudges Hunk in the shoulder, weaponizing his toes by drawing them into points, and digging them right into Hunk’s trapezius.

Hunk wetly sucks in a breath before he stirs.  He groans, rustles, goes still as his sleepy gaze aligns with Lance’s.

“Lance?  What’re you doin’ awake? ” he asks, though not quite so coherently.  “Itchy?"

“Can’t sleep,” Lance says, tucking his thighs even deeper into his chest.  “Also, yeah, it’s itchy.”  Hunk makes an indecipherable noise and turns over.  When he’s settled he closes his eyes again, and Lance thinks the conversation is over, at least until:

Hunk mumbles, “Okay,” as if to give Lance the go-ahead, like he’s gonna take notes on the insides of his eyelids.

“Uh,” Lance says.  He’s not really sure where to go from here.  Talking about the dreams had never really struck him as an option, until now, in this moment.  “Let’s say that one day, hypothetically, one of us found out that we were never fit for Voltron in the first place?  Whaddya think would happen?”

Hunk yawns.  “We’d find something else for them to do, then,” he says.

“Even if they couldn’t fly their lion anymore?” Lance says, perplexed beyond words.

“You know who else can’t fly a lion?” Hunk somehow produces a pillow from the depths of the couch.  “Coran.  Better get him off the castle-ship ASAP.”  He pronounces it like “ay-sap."

“‘Snot the same thing,” Lance says, but he smiles despite himself.

“Go back to sleep, Lance,” Hunk groans.  “We can talk about this in the morning.”

_Or we can talk about it never._

Lance sighs and falls onto his back.  He’s pretty sure he’s in for a long night, but Hunk is right: he needs to try at least.  Lance tries not to feel stupid when his eyes start to burn.

And then Hunk sits up halfway, meaning he has something to add.

“We don’t want anything from you, Lance,” he says, and Lance’s breath leaves him in an audible  _woosh.  "_ We don’t need anything, either.  We just like you, occasionally.  Okay?” 

“...Okay.”

_Okay._

"Now can I go back to sleep?”

“Yeah,” Lance says, pleased with how calm he sounds despite being frozen in place.

He doesn’t bother to wipe away the tears that slip down his cheeks and pool around his ears in the aftermath.  Instead, he stares up at the ceiling, feeling the salty tracks dry and wondering why he’d waited so long.  As he slips into slumber, there’s a fleeting moment where he wonders how Keith is doing.

Lance has the nightmare a few times more, but it’s never quite the same.  

 

* * *

 

"Everybody ready?"

Shiro's voice crackles loud and clear over the shared connection, and processed as it is, still it's heavy with something like anticipation.  Turns out he’s still piloting Black, which is a relief of a revelation.

The chorus of "All set!" and "Ready, boss!" from Hunk and Pidge, almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth, are to be expected, Keith thinks as he finally manages to seat himself in the pilot's chair.

It doesn't feel real.  None of this does.  Not a single part of him can believe that he made it this far.  Definitely can't believe Allura's and Coran's encouraging voices in his ears, from where they watch in the bridge.  Can't believe Lance is mere meters to Keith's left in his own lion, goofy grin visible in his laugh.

"Ready," Keith confirms, and though he's not quite sure that it's true, he places a shaky hand over the launch panel.  He takes a moment to breathe in the voices of his teammates—his friends—talking over and under one another.

And then, they're off.

**Author's Note:**

> [t](http://spiritagay.tumblr.com)


End file.
